A Wall Street billionaire is pledging to spend "whatever it takes" to make manmade global warming the "defining issue of our generation." Most recently, he sent airplanes with banners over Boston that read "Steve Lynch for Oil Evil Empire." Lynch, a fellow Democrat and Senate candidate, favors the Keystone pipeline and the jobs it would create.

"The goal here is not to win," says Tom Steyer, who assembled his $1.4 billion fortune as a hedge fund manager. "The goal here is to destroy these people, We want a smashing victory." Smash any politicians who might "wimp out" on the harsh policies necessary to change the world into Steyer's "green energy" image. Spoken like a true Big Board Type-A personality,

Notice, however, that Steyer isn't offering to help us pay the extra cost of the green energy systems he demands, That would cost too much even for a billionaire. Germany's environment minister, Peter Altmeier, recently disclosed that his country's green energy transition will cost $1.310 trillion dollars! Moreover, the $1.310 trillion would only fund the green energy transition for Germany, a small country with just 82 million people, At the German rate of $15,000 per capita, would the world of 7 billion people look forward to spending $100 trillion for the whole global green transformation? There isn't that much money in the world, and with green energy limitations there won't ever be that much.

Green energy also costs more to operate. And all of this wouldn't even reduce CO2 emissions, That's because there isn't any really "green" energy. Europe's solar and wind energy are so erratic they must be backed 90 percent by fossil power plants in "spinning reserve." The only real "solution" for the CO2 problem is nuclear, which isn't on anybody's ballot.

Steyer also needs to be aware of the limitations even of a victory at the polls, A narrow win like Obama's last won't be enough to force an energy policy that's viscerally opposed by the average American, The shale gas revolution is now in full swing, thanks to America's private property laws and the public's recent cheerful experience with "fracking." Natural gas is far cheaper here than in Europe, and EU chemical and plastics makers are shifting their investments to expand the jobs here instead,

It is doubtful that even the EPA will dare trying to push the shale gas back underground —or that an administration can continue to rule effectively while defending such a rule,

Add in the recent discovery of 3 trillion tons of coal undersea off Norway, and recent successes in bringing up natural gas from massive deposits of methane hydrates underneath the Pacific (Japan) and tundra (Alaska),

Steyer's final hurdle, of course, is the lack of warming, The satellite readings show no warming trend since 1997. There has been only a modest warming since 1940 even with the official thermometers shifting ever more heavily into urban heat islands. And the ice record tell us the earth's temperature naturally shifts, abruptly, by 2–4 degree C roughly every 700 years, The modelers can't explain why the Modern Warming is different from the Medieval Warming.

The current non-warming trend—and very possibly a moderate cooling—is likely to last until about 2037 because of a Pacific cooling cycle, Steyer's billion will run out long before then.

Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., is an environmental economist. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer,of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years. Readers may email to cgfi@mgwnet.com. Visit our website at www. cgfi.org